We are slowly discovering that wheat is actually strongly
contraindicated in terms of gut health. This hold true for a range
of foods as well, but most are not consumed often enough to place
pressure on the internal biome itself.
Wheat is a far different matter as anyone who has tried to limit its
use can attest. Yet I do suspect that abstinance is not necessaary
but serious avoidence certainly is. I do not think wheat on its own
is addictive although the sugar involved is. Try eating raw flour.
Some day we will have our natural diet all figured out, but we
obviously hnave plenty distance to go down that road.
Another Reason Why
Wheat and GMOs Can Destroy Your Health
August 9, 2014
A new study
indicates that wheat contributes to the growth of pathogenic bacteria
in our gut, adding to growing concern that GMO foods are doing the
same.
A new study published
in FEMS Microbiology Ecology titled, “Diversity of the
cultivable human gut microbiome involved in gluten metabolism:
isolation of microorganisms with potential interest for coeliac
disease,” has revealed something remarkable about the human gut
bacteria (microbiome). Some of the extremely hard to digest proteins
in wheat colloquially known as “gluten” (there are actually
over 23,000 identified in the wheat proteome) were
found metabolizable through a 94 strains of bacterial species
isolated from the human gut (via fecal sampling).
This discovery is all
the more interesting when you consider that, according to Alessio
Fasano, the Medical Director for The University of Maryland’s
Center for Celiac Research, the human genome does not possess the
ability to produce enzymes capable of sufficiently breaking down
gluten.
As reported
on TenderFoodie in interview:
“We do not have the
enzymes to break it [gluten] down. It all depends upon how well our
intestinal walls close after we ingest it and how our immune system
reacts to it.”
The new study helps to
fill the knowledge gap as to how humans are capable of dealing with
wheat consumption at all. As we have analyzed in a previous
article, The Dark Side of Wheat, the consumption of wheat is a
relatively recent dietary practice, stretching back only 10,000 years
– a nanosecond in biological time. We simply have not had time to
genetically adapt to its consumption (at least not without
experiencing over 200 empirically confirmed adverse health
effects!).
If bacteria in our
microbiome extend our ability to digest physiologically incompatible
foods – or at least tolerate them to the degree that they don’t
outright kill us – then this may explain why there is such a wide
variability in responses to gluten and why the health of
our microbiome may play a central role in determining our levels of
susceptibility to its adverse effects.
Another provocative
finding of the study is that some of the strains capable of breaking
down the more immunotoxic peptides in wheat, including the 33 amino
acid long peptide known as 33-mer, are highly pathogenic, such as
Clostridium botulinum – the bacteria that is capable of producing
botulism. As we discussed in a previous article on Monsanto’s Roundup
herbicide (glyphosate) contributing to the overgrowth of this
pathogenic strain of bacteria in animals exposed to GMO feed,
“[It]t only takes 75
billionths of a gram (75 ng) to kill a person weighing 75 kg (165
lbs). It has been estimated that only 1 kilogram (2.2 lbs) would
be enough to kill the entire human population.
There are several
implications, therefore, of this finding. First, the consumption of
wheat preferentially favors the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the
gut. Second, given that much of the Western diet now contains Roundup
herbicide contaminated food, including wheat – where Roundup is
used as a post-harvest dessicant, virtually guaranteeing it is
contaminated with it despite being non-GMO – there is likely an
amplifying effect of this pathogenic bacteria in those who consume
both wheat and GMO food. This may help to explain why the mass
introduction of GMOs over the past decade has contributed to
the explosion in diagnoses of gluten sensitivity.
Additionally, a
recent article by Dr. Kelly Brogan, MD, discussed how the
hunter-gatherer microbiome is conspicuously low in the Clostridium
bacteria family, based on research into the modern hunter-gatherer
Hadza gastrointestinal flora. This study indicates that
for much of our evolution – the vast majority of it – Clostridium
was not present in significant quantities in our bodies, likely
because their diet did not encourage it.
From the perspective
of our ancestral microbiome, modern humankind has become almost a new
species due to our reliance on novel new ‘foods’ like wheat
and agrochemical contaminated GMOs that have contributed to
the development of a relationship with strains of bacteria that were
alien to us, for some populations, even 100 years ago. The microbiome
genome is 95% larger than our genome – containing 2 million protein
coding genes versus only 23,000 for the human body alone. The shift
towards pathological strains may have to do both with a radical
change in the human diet to a grain-based — and particularly
wheat-based diet – and, again, the ever-expanding consumption
of Roundup herbicide laden foods.
So, what does this
mean? Where do we go from here?
Fundamentally, this
study indicates that wheat is not something that we want to eat. It
forces our body to become inhabitants of strains of bacteria that we
have never before needed to occupy our bodies, and which are capable
of doing great harm. While some of the strains that degrade gluten
are non-pathogenic (e.g. 39% were from the mostly
beneficial Lactobacillus family), taken as a whole, the discovery
that a variety of Clostridium strains (as well as related potentially
pathogenic strains from genuses such as Klebsiella and
Staphylococcus) thrive in a wheat-based diet, and adding in the fact
that GMO foods further contribute to their overgrowth, it
seems that the pathway towards optimal health requires the
elimination of both.
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